A new solar array panel was installed at C.F. Patton Middle School located at Kennett for school’s vegetable garden to grow produce nine months of the year, reports Southern Chester Country News.
Sen. Dominic Pileggi, who attended the dedication along with Rep. Chris Ross, school administrators, students and school staff appreciated the project.
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The panels were engineered and constructed by Tri-M, a company headquartered in Kennett. It is part of the school’s Patton Project, a Family Consumer Science Course branch offered to eighth-grade students, an extensive program of commitment to renewable energy and power.
The food grown at the Patton garden is donated to Kennett Food Cupboard for local homeless shelters.
The solar panels will provide power to school’s greenhouse to enable a much longer growing season.
The solar panels, which were set up six years ago with the help of teachers now enable Patton’s greenhouse to provide food from March to early December.
It’s hard to imagine, but here in Unionville-Chadds Ford School District, 3 percent of people live in poverty or below, but just a mile and a half from Kennett, nearly 40 percent of the people live in poverty. What this helps to do is provide fresh food and vegetables to families in need, commented, Phoebe Kitson-Davis, coordinator, Chester County Food Bank.
It’s amazing to see how much food that can be produced from such a small area of land. What students learn in the classroom and in textbooks gets put into practical form, said, Hadley McKnight, student who attends the school’s Consumer Science Class.
Sabeena Wahid
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